This story is from the comments listed below, summarised by AI.
Authenticity Assessment: Not Suspicious
Based on the comments, the account appears authentic. There are no serious red flags suggesting it is a bot or inauthentic.
The user identifies as a desister, not a detransitioner, and their passionate, detailed, and consistent arguments about trauma, misdiagnosis, and medical ethics align with the experiences and frustrations common in that community. The language is natural, and the advice is personalized and nuanced.
About me
I was a deeply unhappy teenager who started to believe I was a trans man because I hated my female body and felt trapped by society's expectations. I almost pursued hormones and surgery, thinking it was the solution to my depression and trauma. I stopped because I realized my pain wasn't truly about gender, but about my untreated mental health. Through proper therapy, I worked through my trauma and those feelings faded away. I'm grateful I didn't make permanent changes and now believe we must address underlying issues before considering transition.
My detransition story
My journey with gender started when I was around 16. I was deeply unhappy and struggling with my mental health. I had been diagnosed with depression and anxiety, and I later learned I was also dealing with C-PTSD from past trauma. I hated the changes my body was going through during puberty and I felt a lot of pressure from what society expected of me as a female. I started spending a lot of time online and found communities where people talked about these feelings and called it being transgender.
For a while, I really thought I might be a trans man. I hated my breasts and my periods, and I thought that if I could just change my body, all that discomfort and mental anguish would go away. I looked into getting top surgery and even starting testosterone. I saw how easy it seemed for people online to get a doctor's note for hormones after just one short appointment, and it felt like the obvious solution.
But something held me back. I started to realize that a lot of my feelings weren't necessarily about gender. My depression was severe, and I learned that testosterone can act like a mild antidepressant. I was worried that I was just trying to treat my depression and trauma by changing my gender, and that it was a dangerous shortcut. I also saw that many people who detransitioned had similar stories—they had other mental health issues or trauma that hadn't been addressed first.
I never ended up taking hormones or having any surgery. I'm what they call a "desister." I stopped before I went down that path. Instead, I finally found a therapist who was willing to help me address my C-PTSD head-on, without immediately affirming a trans identity. It was hard, grueling work, but as we worked through my trauma, those intense feelings of body hatred and wanting to be a different person started to fade. I realized that hating your period or not liking societal expectations is something a lot of women go through; it doesn't automatically mean you're trans.
I don't believe I was ever truly transgender. I think I was a traumatized, mentally ill young woman who was influenced by online communities and a healthcare system that was too quick to affirm. I'm grateful I figured it out before making any permanent changes to my body. I don't regret exploring my gender, but I deeply regret how close I came to making a life-altering mistake based on a misdiagnosis. I now believe that trauma, mental health conditions, and even autism should be thoroughly ruled out before anyone ever considers medical transition. It makes me angry to see how difficult it is to have these conversations now without being called transphobic. This isn't about hate; it's about making sure people get the right help first.
Age | Year | Event |
---|---|---|
16 | 2018 | Began experiencing severe depression, anxiety, and discomfort with female puberty. Started exploring gender identity online. |
17 | 2019 | Seriously considered transitioning (FTM), looked into testosterone and top surgery. |
18 | 2020 | Researched detransition stories and began therapy focused on C-PTSD. Decided against medical transition. |
19 | 2021 | Continued therapy. Feelings of gender dysphoria subsided as underlying trauma was addressed. |
Top Comments by /u/The_Drider:
Sounds like you might just have C-PTSD. IMO a lot of misdiagnosed trans people actually have C-PTSD, it can screw with your sense of identity too so you can have genuine identity dysphoria, it's just that it comes from trauma not from trans.
Probably best to start addressing that before you go down the trans rabbithole.
"Trauma or trans" should be one of the first things gender doctors go to tbh. Check off the easier alternatives first. There's also a supposed correlation between autism and AGP, which in turn is often mistaken for trans (or even considered a form of trans in itself), so that would be another thing to check off.
This kind of censorship is precisely what causes so many detrans cases. This isn't just a reddit thing. Trans has become so PC that actual doctors are afraid to consider the possibility someone might not be trans, thus pushing a lot of people into trans who will end up detransing later. There's a video somewhere of someone managing to legally change their gender after a day of minimal effort, only talking to like one doctor for 15 minutes.
Is there realiable data on how much of the commonly cited 40% suicide rate is post-op? I suspect most post-op suicides are actually detransers that realized their mistake too late, so pretty much the direct result of over-promoting srs as a cure-all to dysphoria.
They're prevented from truly informed consent by misinformation.
Well said. All the politcal correctness meant to "protect trans people" is actually making it impossible for them to make informed decisions about their transition at this point, it's utterly horrible.
Discouraging people from questioning is literally the opposite of helping trans people. Being trans is hard, nobody wants to be trans, they just are. So if someone might not be trans that's massively worth investigating since it might spare that someone the long process of transition.
A lot of "trans" people were initially just confused about their identity for whatever reason - puberty, mental health, trauma, etc... - but then got pressured into the whole trans fad. Once you take off that pressure some figure themselves out on their own.
You can be gender critical - that's the broader umbrella term that TERFs form the extreme version of - and trans. In fact I believe that you can ONLY be truly accepting of trans people if you are GC, since believing that biological sex is completely imaginary directly implies that trans people do not exist.
There is no way that someone could be born with a condition that makes them feel bad for wearing certain kinds of clothes, because such clothes do not exist in the wild.
You're correct, but that's not what gender dysphoria is. Dysphoria isn't about clothes, it's about bodies, and bodies are the wild. Basically it makes sense evolutionarily speaking that intelligent beings like humans would have some internal concept of what their body is supposed to be like, and it furthermore makes sense that this concept would be gendered as evolution happens around reproduction and reproduction is gendered. It's ultimately a lot like a checksum for a digital file: When sending a file across the net, it makes sense to do a checksum to make sure the file was transferred correctly. Gender dysphoria is essentially just your subconscious screaming a checksum error at you. (Note that gender dysphoria isn't the only reason such an error could occur, there are other forms of dysphoria.)
Do you actually hear a sound when looking at a mirror? Cause that might be something different from gender dysphoria, your described memory issues are also consistent with CPTSD. Do you know if you've been sexually abused as a child?
I'd say get checked for CPTSD first, then for gender dysphoria. Could be that some kinda transition is actually the right thing for you.
I hated my breasts, hated periods, and hated certain things society expected of me as a female.
Virtually every woman hates having periods, and hating societal expectations is normal for every sex/gender. I think more gender-questioning people need to be told this. Not liking things your body does and that people expect of you because of your body doesn't automatically make you trans.
Trauma is also a big thing. At this point I think we should make it a diagnostic requirement to check for trauma before giving a trans diagnosis, if you find trauma chances are that's the cause of the dysphoria, not being genuinely trans.
I think it’s shameful how hidden certain things about medical procedures are within the trans community. People should know what they’re getting into, and unfortunately it’s just not discussed at all.
This is how political correctness literally kills people. It's no longer politically correct to "question" - i.e. discuss in any remotely critical way - anything about trans, which leads to a lot of important information regarding the safety of those same trans people being kept from them. Existing as detrans makes you a walking hate crime these days.
There seems to be a wide-spread notion among trans
peopleactivists that biological sex isa social constructhate speech.
FTFY
As with many issues regarding trans the cause are overzealous trans activists. The same people responsible for the over-affirming health care system that is the reason for the flood of detrans people we're seeing now.
Yea, dysphoria often stems from trauma. This is why people will feel "less trans" once their trauma is treated. It's almost as if treating the trauma first would be a better idea, but that gets you called "transphobic" these days.
Anyway your partner clearly has similar issues. Just open the conversation on detransition and they might tell you on their own that they've been thinking about it, then you can just go "me too". If they're really against detransition you'll also know without having given anything away. If that happens, and I think it's very unlikely, you can post here again and figure out a new approach.
Eitherways actually detransitioning yourself sounds like a good idea. Even just stopping HRT can give you some clarity. Testosterone is a mild antidepressant, so it is technically mind-altering, also means you might get a mood drop when you stop T so watch out for that.
One thing about transition that is often massively downplayed is just how much hormone levels can affect your mental state. Testosterone is actually a mild anti-depressant, which can trick people into thinking they're ftm when they're really just garden-variety depressed.
In your case that means once you stop the hormones - which you should definitely do - your mental state will probably be messed up until your natural hormone levels stabilize again. If you've already stopped hormones that might be part of the reason why you're feeling so shitty right now.
Once you're back to your natural hormone levels you can access your situation more soberly and figure out what to do. As for other people I'd say those who won't accept you for detransing never really accepted you for being trans, they were just following the trans hype.